My Father, James Jones, and Censorship

My Father, James Jones, and Censorship

In 1950, when my father realized that Scribner was going to cut a great many sexual references along with four-letter words from the manuscript of From Here to Eternity, he grew calm and focused and reasonable–that is, reasonable for a man who was known for his hot temper. He wrote thoughtful, equable letters to his editor, Burroughs Mitchell (later collected in To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones, 1989), who’d taken over for Maxwell Perkins after Perkins died. Mitchell and the in-house lawyers had explained that the book would not get past the censors if they left it the way it was …